The rest of the week was grueling. Breakfast, then up in the MiG to dogfight, then land and debrief. Day after day. My thighs were sore from tensing my legs to counter the g-forces. Besides defeating Jackal once, I still felt like a novice. I’d come close to hitting the hard deck three times. Stalled out four times.
In the middle of the week, a truck delivered a pair of flight simulator setups. After we set them up in a spare room inside the terminal building, our debriefings got more intense. Though the simulator couldn’t compare to the feel of actually flying, Jackal and I were able to use it to recreate scenarios and positions, and see how things could turn out differently.
As we finished a debriefing Saturday, Jackal called out to me. “Hey, good work this week. Take tomorrow off. Or, at least we won’t be going up tomorrow. I’ve got some things to take care of in town.”
The next morning, I left my trailer after breakfast and headed for the terminal building. I entered the simulator room, sat down in the seat, and started setting up a simulation. I flew a MiG-29 against a MiG-21 for practice. The MiG-21 was older, slower, and less agile, but a smaller target overall.
Flying in the simulator felt odd. My body was used to being pressed into the seat while pitching up and jostled side to side in a roll. But I felt nothing when flying in the simulator. I felt like I had been spoiled by flying the real thing.
As I shot my third MiG-21 down, I heard the door open. I turned to see Vixen and Shizuka enter the room. Both of them were wearing flight suits. Seeing Vixen in one gave me pause for a moment. I took my hand off of the stick and waved. “Hey there!”
They smiled as they approached. “Figured we’d find you here.” Vixen said, “Jackal says you’re getting better.”
I chuckled, “I sure hope so.”
“How about you show me?” Vixen asked. I opened my mouth to answer, but she was already sliding into the opposite simulator seat. “Shizuka, mind resetting the simulation for us?”
“Like this?” As Shizuka interacted with the server, my monitor returned to the mission setup screen. The screen showed a map of a region of coastal no-man’s-land, with the ocean out to the west. The coastal beaches quickly gave way to badlands further inward, and the land was dotted with impact craters.
“Oh, and one more thing.” Vixen added, “If I can make a suggestion, Lynx: Try the Su-27 instead of your MiG. I think you might like that one a bit more.
I thought for a moment. It had never occurred to me to try a different plane. My simulator time with Jackal had been devoted to learning maneuvers in the MiG-29, but even alone, I had still only focused on that one plane.
I placed myself in a Su-27. The cockpit was different, but all I needed were the stick and throttle. The simulation started with my plane already in midair. I looked slightly to the left. Onscreen, my view followed my head’s movements, slewing left.
Beyond my left wing flew an F-2. The whole plane was painted blue. Dark blue on top and light blue on the undercarriage. Its tail bore an emblem: A roulette wheel. Something about it seemed familiar to me, but before I could think about it, Vixen was on me.
She flared her airbrakes, slowing down and slipping in behind me. I pushed my throttle to escape. I could already see the tracers from her cannon fly past me. She wasn’t playing around. I climbed at full afterburner, before inverting and pulling hard to disengage. Though I still wasn’t used to the lack of physical feedback, the Su-27 already felt more responsive.
Vixen was still chasing me. She had inverted and followed me. “Get creative, Lynx,” Vixen commented, “we’re not bound by MAC rules.”
She was right. At that moment, we were simply playing a video game. I inverted again and pulled hard, descending toward the badlands, past what would have been the hard deck. Vixen wasn’t far behind. My speed increased as I descended. Pulling back, I leveled off above the ground, before rolling right and diving into a canyon.
“Oooh! You’re making this interesting!” Vixen quipped as she dove into the canyon behind me. More tracers from her cannon flew past me. As I turned hard to stay inside the canyon, I began to regret my decision. After a series of narrow misses with the canyon wall, I leveled off and pulled hard, climbing up out of the canyon.
I inverted and looked into the canyon. Vixen was still flying along it. She must’ve missed seeing me ascend. I dove and flew along the top of the canyon, following Vixen’s F-2. I could see that up ahead, the canyon terminated. As Vixen climbed out at the end of the canyon, I squeezed the trigger. A burst of tracers flew toward her plane, narrowly missing it.
“Nice move,” Vixen teased “would’ve been better if it hit.” She pulled up into a loop, flaring her airbrakes at the apex and making a tight descent. I countered by banking left. She expertly followed my turn, pointing her nose directly in the path of my turn. I flew straight into a shower of Vulcan cannon rounds. When I emerged, my left wing was shredded and my right wing was gone.
I hit the eject button. My Su-27’s canopy disappeared, jettisoning into the wind. Half a second later, my in-game pilot was rocketed away from the burning wreck of a plane. The smoldering husk trailed smoke as it tumbled to the ground and exploded on impact.
I exhaled. Even without the movement and g-forces, that was intense. I had no idea Vixen could fly like that. She must’ve been a formidable pilot in her younger years.
“You did pretty good for someone who only started this week.”
I looked up. Vixen was standing next to my seat, holding her hand out. I stepped out of the seat and shook her hand. “Won’t lie, that was kinda scary.”
“I guess I let instinct take over. Sorry if I freaked you out.”
“No, that was fun!” I replied, “We should try again when I’m more experienced.”
Vixen giggled, “Just don’t fly like that with Jackal or he’ll have a heart attack.”
The three of us spent the rest of the day together. Vixen and I continued to run simulations, flying together against simulated adversaries in various combat scenarios. We even convinced Shizuka to give the simulator a try, teaching her how to fly a MiG-29.
As I retired to my trailer for the night, I recalled the emblem on Vixen’s F-2 in the simulator. It seemed so familiar, like I remembered it somewhere, but I couldn’t place where.
The next morning, I entered the hangar and looked around. Jackal was nowhere to be found and the MiGs were out on the tarmac. I could hear the whistle of their idle engines. As I walked over to the equipment rack, I noticed something on our MiGs that theyhadn’t had before: Missiles.
I quickly donned my vest and walked out to my jet with my helmet tucked tightly underneath my arm. After the ground crew helped me into the cockpit, I put my helmet on and connected my mask to the airplane. To my left, I could see Jackal sitting in his plane. I heard him over the radio, “G’morning, Lynx. How was yesterday?”
I took hold of the controls, nodding to myself, “Pretty good.”
“You spent all day in the simulator, didn’t you?”
“Well, not all day…”
“Figured as much. You’re dedicated, I’ll give you that.”
“It was fun! Vixen even flew with me.”
“Vixen did? Well, given her history, I’m sure she taught you a lot.”
“We have missiles today, Jackal?”
“Yep. We’re taking a break from dogfighting and we’re gonna teach you how to deploy some missiles. Some of the farmers upriver were nice enough to send up some tethered balloons with some targets for us. We’ll start taxiing as soon as Vixen- Wait, there she is.”
I looked to my right. Vixen and Shizuka were riding toward us on the back of a jeep. As the vehicle approached, it slowed down, allowing the two to hop to the ground before it turned and proceeded down the taxiway.
“Vixen will lead the way. Follow me in.”
Shizuka stood near the edge of the taxiway as Vixen stepped out in front of our jets. She raised her right hand, clutching a lightstick. Her voice came in over the radio. “Vixen, walking Unicorn Team out to three-zero.” With a flourish, she spun, stomping her boot into the tarmac and facing the opposite direction. Keeping her lightstick in the air, she strutted out into the taxiway, to its far edge, where Shizuka was watching. Jackal’s plane soon followed her swaying hips, with mine close behind.
Vixen kept to the edge of the taxiway, waving her lightstick to direct our MiGs toward the runway. She waved at us as we passed. As we took the runway and closed our canopies, I heard Vixen’s voice again. “Cleared for takeoff. Good luck, you two!”
With that, Jackal and I throttled up and took off.
As we flew up the river, Jackal came in on the radio. “Okay, turn your radar and your master arm on.” As I flipped the switches, he continued explaining, “Your radar’s displayed in the center of your HUD. If your radar sees a target, you can track and lock onto it, even if you can’t see it yourself. It’s also linked to mine, so you’ll get any targets I have. There should be one in front of you. Looks like two dashes.”
Indeed, near the center of the display were two dashes in a straight line. “I see it!”
“Good. Press down the target designator on the throttle and you’ll lock on. As soon as the plane tells you, go ahead and pull the trigger.”
I pushed the button on my throttle and a circle appeared in the middle of my HUD. I couldn’t see what it was indicating, but soon a female voice sounded off in my ear. “Shoot! Shoot!” I pulled the trigger and felt a weight leave my left wing. As I leveled my plane, I saw a missile streak from my wing off into the distance.
“Woah! Cool!”
Jackal kept me focused. “That’s a semi-active radar-guided missile. It’ll track the target as long as you have a radar lock. The call is ‘fox one.’”
I nodded. “Unicorn Two, fox one.” Soon, the word “KILL” flashed up on my HUD.
“Good shot, Lynx. That’s ‘splash one.’”
“Unicorn Two, splash one.”
“There’s another one out there. Off to the right. See if you can find it.”
I leaned forward, staring into my HUD and moving the target designator around. Another set of two dashes appeared and I quickly locked onto it. Turning my plane to bear on the target, I heard the call again: “Shoot! Shoot!”
The missile dropped from the rail and screamed toward its target. “Unicorn Two, fox one.”
“Good,” Jackal encouraged. “Stay on him until your missile hits.” A few seconds passed and “KILL” flashed onto my HUD again.
“Unicorn Two, splash two!”
“Good kill, Lynx. There are two more up near the lake, emitting thermal signatures. We’ll get close enough to see them, then try out your heat-seekers. The fox twos.”
I rejoined on Jackal’s wing, flying up the river with him. As the lake came into view, Mama Bear came in over the radio.
“Jackal, Lynx, we need you to return immediately.”
Jackal and I looked at each other simultaneously. He motioned backward over his shoulder with his thumb before putting his MiG in a steady leftward bank. I followed him closely. He then replied, “Why, what’s wrong?”
“I thought it was just some planes passing through,” Mama Bear spoke in a hushed tone, panic in her voice, “but then they started circling overhead. A pair of Tucanos!”
My heart raced and my grip tightened on the throttle. I looked down outside the canopy as I continued listening.
“We’re on our way back,” Jackal replied. “Where are Vixen and Shizuka?”
“They’re up here in the tower with me. Everyone’s indoors, but all of the trucks and trailers are still outside.”
“Keep everyone indoors and stay on the radio.”
“Will do.” Mama Bear replied.
“Lynx, this just got serious,” Jackal said, “Follow my lead, do exactly as I tell you, and we’ll make it through this, you understand?”
I took a deep breath through my mask and glanced left, looking at the farmland below us. I took another deep breath before facing forward.
“I understand.”